A recent cat fight on Facebook, has apparently centered around Kate Mulgrew, the actress who for seven years, played the role of Captain Katherine Janeway, on the television program Star Trek: Voyager.
It seems that poor Kate (probably very innocently; actors are apparently often misled in the case of such documentaries) agreed to do some introductory voice over work, for a documentary advocating terrestrial geocentrism, or the idea that the Earth is the center of the Universe, which all other celestial bodies revolve around. Apparently, she was then predictably swarmed with various forms of abuse, by the rabidly scientistic and anti-theistic elements within her fan base. This led her to issue a recent recantation of the film, where she acknowledged that she was in no way an advocate of geocentrism.
Speaking more generally, I will admit that it took me a very long time, before I could cease to care about what Richard Dawkins and his underlings think. As tragic as it may be, I now live in a global society where neo-Atheism is largely the default and incumbent philosophical model. For those of us whose personal experience does not permit them the luxury of Atheism, that is a very difficult and socially isolating condition.
As my first post in (and the title of) this blog will probably demonstrate, I have reached a point where I am largely happy to be considered entirely insane by Atheists. This does not mean that I genuinely consider myself to be insane; it simply means that I have freed myself from the need to adhere to their arbitrary definition of sanity. I have ultimately come to the conclusion that the newer, mass-market form of Atheism, is nothing more than yet another opiate for the masses. In that sense, the objective is social control, and the enforcement of conformity with a pre-generated dogmatic model. In reality, genuine truth has very little to do with it, except to the degree to which that they can use their claims of truth to justify themselves, or, to quote Hubbard, "move lots and lots of bodies through the shop."
To answer the more immediate, specific question; am I a geocentrist? No, but on pondering the question, I realised that the basis of my answer, was not what I consider to be genuinely scientific. That is to say, I have taken the idea that the Earth and the other planets revolve around the Sun for granted, without attempting in any way to experimentally prove otherwise for myself. I could cite rational ignorance as an excuse for not doing so, but perhaps I should not. I acknowledge, however, that if I do plead that excuse, then I forfeit the right to engage in definite advocacy of either position; heliocentrism or geocentrism.
This is a different attitude to that of the armchair atheist, who believes that despite lacking first hand, empirical evidence either way, he is still free to attempt to bludgeon everyone else into accepting the consensus, as long as said consensus has been given to him by the "mainstream scientific community," or other credentialled "experts." In the past, when Western society was much more widely schooled in Hellenic rhetoric, this would have been known as an example of argumentum ad verecundium.
